Dar al Jadeed is a Lebanese publishing house based in Beirut, founded in 2000 by political activist and commentator Lokman Slim and his sister, novelist Rasha al Ameer. The company has focused on works exploring neglected or overlooked areas of Arab intellectual and literary history, publishing fiction, poetry, and essays, sometimes in bilingual editions. It has received two international honours; the Sheikh Zayed Book Award's publishing and Technology award in 2021, and the International Publishers Association's Prix Voltaire, awarded posthumously to Slim later that year following his assassination in February 2021.
History Slim and Ameer conceived the idea for a publishing house after studying in Paris, where they had gone following the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. They returned to Lebanon in 1990, intending, in Al Ameer's words, to produce free and avant-garde books "to match the scale of our dreams." The company was formally established in Beirut in 2000. Its first published titled was a poetry collection by the medieval mystic al-Hallaj.
Slim also founded Umam Documentation & Research, a Beirut based research institute, which came to work closely alongside Dar al Jadeed; al Ameer described the institutions as having jointly shaped the literary and research work they set out to do.Slim was assassinated on February 2021, an act widely linked to his broader activism through both organizations.
Publications Dar al Jadeed's catalogue includes works by prominent contemporary Arab writers, among them poetry collections by Mahmoud Darwish (Ahad 'Ashara Kawkaban (Eleven planets), Ara ma Ureed (I see what i want)) and by Ounsi el Hajj. The press has also republished the linguistic and intellectual writings of Abdullah al-Alayli, including his "Muujam and An Introduction to the Language of Arabs."
Under the imprint known as "Carbon Copy" the publisher has reissued classic Arabic text in the original format in the layout of their first editions; One example is Taha Hussein's "On Jahili Poetry", reproduced in the layout of its original 1929 Cairo printing by Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya.
Awards In April 2021, Rasha al Ameer received the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the Publishing and Technology category from the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Center, recognizing Dar al Jadeed's work. Later that year following Slim's assassination attributed to Hezbollah, the company won the International Publishers Association's Prix Voltaire, an award recognizing contributions to freedom of expression and freedom to publish. The IPA's then-president, Bodour bint Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, the award recognized that Slim "paid the ultimate price standing up for freedom of expression."
See also
List of assassinations in Lebanon Freedom of the press
References